The care team was more relaxed. As for the patient, operated under general anesthesia, he reacted to the variations of the music. Thanks to an EEG, it was possible to see that his brain recorded the moments when the music stopped or resumed.
- In Italy, surgery on a 10-year-old child with a double brain tumor took place in the presence of a pianist
- Although under general anesthesia, the boy’s brain heard the music and reacted to it.
The virtues of music are limitless. In Italy, surgeons from the hospital in Ancona (Marche region, in the center of the country) performed a surgical operation accompanied by a pianist in order to relax the patient and the healthcare team.
A music aware brain
On November 17, a 10-year-old boy was operated on for a double spinal cord tumour. Doctor Roberto Trigani, the neurosurgeon on this operation, was assisted by Emilianiano Toso, a molecular biologist who is also a pianist in his spare time. And a musician and his piano accompanied the intervention.
Using an electroencephalogram, the medical team was able to monitor the behavior of the boy’s brain while he was under general anesthesia. The operation, which lasted four hours, showed that it was possible to reassure patients and to assess the effects of music on brain activity during the operation.
“We tried to stop and then restart the music, observing the patient’s response. Even under general anesthesia, his brain perceived the music”, explained Emiliano Toso to the Ansa press agency. At the end of the operation, where the two tumors could be removed, the 10-year-old boy himself confirmed that he heard the piano notes.
Music therapy increasingly popular
Other operations of the kind have already been carried out in other hospitals, always with the objective of calming the anesthetized patient while observing the cerebral activity of the latter. One of the most famous examples took place in India in 2017, when a musician played guitar himself during his own brain surgery. Most of the time, the idea behind this technique is to better understand how the brain works while analyzing whether certain areas are still alert (and therefore not damaged).
.